Category: News (Page 14 of 40)

race-by-race wrapups

PSM – NORWALK 2021

June 28, 2021 / Todd Veney

As the 2021 Camping World Drag Racing Series approaches its midpoint, former NHRA Rookie of the Year Cory Reed isn’t quite up to speed. “My motorcycle’s a little behind right now,” he admitted after a tough first-round loss to longtime nemesis Andrew Hines. “[Teammate] Joey [Gladstone]’s bike has all the kinks worked out. It’s settled, smooth. Mine’s still fighting itself.”

Reed, who reached his second career final earlier this season Las Vegas, never really got going at the Summit Nationals in rural Norwalk, Ohio. After sitting through the rain all day Friday for one shot at the waterlogged Norwalk strip, he trudged to a middling 7.05 at 194 mph that positioned him ninth at the time but just 14th by the end of the session.

Saturday, Reed picked up with a 7.07/193 and a subsequent 6.96/195 in last-shot qualifying that got him off the bump and into the field for good. “We kept having wheelie bar issues,” said the young rider, who entered eliminations 13th in the final lineup. “I mean, we tried everything. Changing the tire seemed to work, and the bike improved almost every time it went down the racetrack after that. Basically, we learned here what to do with the wheelie bar on a hot track: raise it up. It really helps.”

Facing Hines, who’s ruined a lot of opponents’ afternoons on the way to a half-dozen NHRA championships, Reed came out on the wrong end of a 6.85/199 to 6.93/193 first-round decision, but, heading into the toughest part of the season, he remains undeterred. “We’re gonna test at Denver before the Mile-High Nationals,” he said. “It’s so slow up there. You have to raise the launch RPM like 1,500 and change just about everything for that one race, but when we get there we’ll be ready.”

TAFC – DENVER 2021

June 21, 2021 / Todd Veney

Perennial title contender Annie Whiteley has always excelled at her home track, winning the Central Regional in 2018, making three other final-round appearances (2014, 2015, and 2019), and qualifying No. 1 three years in a row (2014-16) and four times overall, including last year. But this year, picturesque Bandimere Speedway, on the easternmost ridge of the Rocky Mountains in suburban Denver, wasn’t kind to Top Alcohol Funny Car’s most successful female driver ever. As has happened all too often since her season-opening victory in Belle Rose, La., the weekend ended in a frustrating first-round loss, her fourth in a row in NHRA competition.

Though just hundredths of a second from the pole, Whiteley qualified mid-pack and was unceremoniously bounced first round of eliminations in the most infuriating possible manner: on a holeshot. Heading into last-shot qualifying with a best of 5.76 at 253 mph, she guided the J&A Service/YNot Racing Top Alcohol Funny Car to a straight-as-six-o’clock 5.75/254 to lock down the No. 4 spot.

All around her were other national event champions running in the 5.70s in the thin mountain air: incoming national points leader Doug Gordon (5.71), 2017 world champion Shane Westerfield (5.72), former national winner Kris Hool (5.79), and 2020’s third-ranked driver, Brian Hough, who just missed the .70s with a 5.80-flat. Upstart Kyle Smith also ran a 5.75, but he was four-thousandths of a second quicker than her 5.758 with a 5.754 that earned him the No. 2 position and a much more favorable first-round matchup with Steve Macklyn, who was about a tenth and a half slower than them.

Whiteley, as she always seems to do, got just the wrong opponent in the always nerve-wracking opening round – Hool, who sometimes red-lights, but, when he’s on his game, can cut a light with anybody. Against Whiteley, he did. And, naturally, he made his quickest and fastest run all weekend right then. After an excellent .037 reaction time, Hool had it all the way for a 5.78/249 win over her slightly quicker 5.75/256, which held up for top speed of the meet to the very end, when Gordon tied it in a 5.69 final-round win over Westerfield.

“I just can’t cut a light at this track,” Whiteley said. “Same thing at Belle Rose. At Belle Rose, it’s because they have to back everything down so much to make it down the track that the car won’t move off the staring line. Here … I don’t know what it is.”

PSM – CHARLOTTE 2021

May 17, 2021 / Todd Veney

The Four-Wide Nationals was the quickest, fastest Pro Stock Motorcycle race ever, by far – but not for Cory Reed. For him, it was another trying, unfulfilling weekend, the third in four outings this year, broken up only by his runner-up showing at 2021’s other Four-Wide Nationals, held last month at Las Vegas.

All around the former Rookie of the Year, drivers were making history in the cool Charlotte air, highlighted by PSE teammate Joey Gladstone, who became the eighth and final member of the prestigious Denso Spark Plugs 200-MPH Club with a 200.23-mph blast. Teams reset the NHRA national speed record four different times over the weekend, including three in the same qualifying session, and when eliminations commenced, Reed faced a former world champion in every lane – not just in the other lane, but in all three other lanes.

And right when he really could have done some damage, Reed’s bike let him down. It wasn’t some everyday glitch; this was something that basically never happens – the front brake started locking up. “I was pre-staging, and the bike doesn’t really want to roll, and I’m like, ‘Is the track really this tight?’ ” Reed said. “It really had a lot of rolling resistance, like more than ever. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Right until he tried to approach the line, everything had been normal. He rattled off three unerringly consistent qualifying passes: 6.87/197, 6.87/199, and 6.85/197. The biggest names in the sport occupied every other lane, but Reed held his own, leaving first and making his best run of the weekend, a 6.83/197 that covered 2016 world champion Jerry Savoie’s 6.84/196 but not four-time champion Eddie Krawiec’s 6.77/202 or three-time champ Matt Smith’s 6.78/201.

“That was probably gonna be a .70-something,” Reed said. “At the 330-foot mark, I was in front of everybody – look at the time slip – but that damn front wheel was dragging and they went around me. Just add it to the list, I guess. I don’t get it. Sometimes, drag racing doesn’t make any sense. You take off, and you know it was a decent light and you start to think, ‘Oh yeah…’ And then the farther you go, the more something’s slowing you down. In the shutdown area, I didn’t even have to apply the brakes. The bike did it for me.”

TAFC – DALLAS 2021

May 16, 2021 / Todd Veney

Jim Whiteley’s never feared any driver, but of all the ones he could’ve faced in his first official round in Top Alcohol Funny Car, he drew the only one he didn’t want to race: his wife. Jim, who’s won multiple national events in a Pro Mod and multiple national championships in a Top Alcohol Dragster, prevailed. Reluctantly.

“I don’t want to beat her,” he said of wife Annie Whiteley before they lined up for the first round of the Central Regional at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas. “I don’t even want us to race each other.”

“I do,” Annie said. “I want to beat him.” She almost did. Driving the J&A Service/YNot Racing Yenko blue Camaro, she had the upper hand going in, qualifying third in a very tough eight-car field with a 5.53 at 269.36 mph (top speed of the event). Jim, who’d barely made a full quarter-mile in a Funny Car before this race, wasn’t far behind with a 5.60/258.68, good for the No. 6 spot on the ladder. He actually tied Bryan Brown right down to the thousandth of a second for the No. 5 spot, 5.607 to 5.607, but Brown won the tiebreaker with a slightly better speed, 259 mph to his 258.

Annie got off the starting line first but ran into tire-shake in low gear and Jim, driving an identical mount (one of her old cars), shot into a lead he would never relinquish. Annie continued to reel him in the length of the quarter-mile, but the lost momentum was too great to overcome and he advanced, 5.59/257 to 5.65/262.

“I kept waiting for her to come around me,” said Jim, who fell in the following round to Kyle Smith, who’d won the Funny Car Chaos event here over fuel Funny Car star Del Worsham. “I peeked over there, and she never came by. I didn’t really want to win, but I wasn’t going to just give it to her. Annie would never want that anyway.”

PRO MOD – TULSA 2021

May 9, 2021 / Todd Veney

Last time, it was six. This time, it was just two – the total thousandths a second from the time Jim Whiteley blasted off the starting line until the green light came on to signal the start of the race.

Red-lighting at the Xtreme Texas Nationals in Ferris, Texas was probably worse – that one was a final. This weekend, at the Throw Down at T-Town in Tulsa, the foul that disqualified Whiteley’s J&A Service/YNot Racing team came in the semifinals – not that that made losing any less painless.

“It was dark, I was amped up, I left, and it came up red,” Whiteley explained. “It’s not like I just took off – I saw yellow.” Based on his reaction times in the first two rounds, there’s no doubt.

In contention for the Mid-West Drag Racing Series Pro Mod championship since the start of the season, Whiteley qualified 3rd of 25 entrants at Tulsa Raceway Park with a 3.71 at 203.65 mph on the eighth-mile course, right behind No. 1 Joey Oksas and former series champion Aaron Wells. With door-car superstar “Stevie Fast” Jackson on hand to tune, he then proceeded to battle his way through first- and second-round wins over Brian Lewis, 3.78/197 to 3.93/192, and Tommy Cunningham, who red-lighted, 3.76/199 to 3.79/194.

“Driving this car is the most fun you could ever have,” Whiteley said. “It leaves like a Top Fuel car – it carries the front end, you’re looking at the sky, and it doesn’t come down for a long, long time. You hit 2nd gear, hit 3rd, and before you know it, the front end is setting down and there went the finish line.”

It all came apart in the semifinals against Jon Stouffer, when Whiteley barely, barely came up red, invalidating a potentially winning run. Both drivers ran 3.74s, and with a reaction time anywhere on the green side of the Tree, he’d have been in another final. “All this car needs is a delay box,” Whiteley concluded. “I mean, it’s not like they’re illegal – other guys have been running them for years. And the next time I run this car at night, trust me, it’ll have one.”

PSM – ATLANTA 2021

May 3, 2021 / Todd Veney

Solidly in the middle of the pack, locked in for what figured to be the closest match of the first round – No. 8 vs. No. 9 – Cory Reed faced theoretically the toughest possible opponent: incoming points leader Ryan Oehler, the most recent winner on the 2021 NHRA tour. In the end, it didn’t matter who was in the other lane – he didn’t have a bike to ride.

Runner-up to “Flyin’ Ryan” two weeks ago in Las Vegas, Reed sailed through Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying at the Southern Nationals, the 40th and last at Atlanta Dragway, only to have it all far apart in eliminations. He broke behind the line without ever turning a tire. “This whole deal sucked,” Reed said. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on up there – it seemed like the motor was about to blow up.”

With just a pair of qualifying runs to tune from under Atlanta’s unpopular two-shot format, all arrows were pointing up for Reed heading into race day. He clocked a 6.867 at 198.00 mph Saturday morning on his first attempt and a better 6.842/196.85 that afternoon in the only other session, hanging way off the side in the shutdown area to keep the bike off the wall. Meanwhile, teammate Joey Gladstone’s heroic 6.78 on his first run back from a nasty 200+ mph crash weeks earlier in Darlington, S.C., made him the star of the entire event.

Reed ended up in the same spot he qualified at both previous races this year, Gainesville and Las Vegas: No. 9. He didn’t need to improve to eliminate Oehler; he didn’t even need to make a good run. Any full run would’ve done. But as Oehler was inching toward the line to stage, Reed was climbing off his bike in the water box and walking away in disgust. The two-step failed, and he had no interest in dragging himself to the line just to watch Oehler disappear in the distance. With the track to himself and victory guaranteed, Oehler staggered across the finish line 9.86 seconds later with a blown engine.

“I would have beat him if I got to run, obviously,” Reed said. “You come here with a really fast motorcycle, then on Sunday you can’t even do a burnout. The two-step breaks? I’ve never heard of that happening, ever. I mean, that’s a $45 part. You know something’s wrong, but you don’t know what it is – I thought the pistons were parked on the cylinder walls or something. I popped the clutch, and the motor just went ‘Uhhhhh…’ No power. I tried putting it in second for some ratio, but nothing was happening. Everyone’s yelling, ‘Stage it, stage it,’ but I’m like, ‘Nah.’ I already knew it wasn’t going go anywhere. Why stick a rod out the side of the block for nothing?”

TAFC – LAS VEGAS 2021

April 19, 2021 / Todd Veney

Brandon Snider’s highly anticipated NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car debut didn’t end in a storybook victory, but this weekend, for once, that wasn’t really the point. At the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals – the first time alcohol cars have ever raced four at a time – the stated objective for Annie Whiteley’s J&A/YNot team was to further develop their torque-converter setup, a goal more than achieved.

Snider, the former PDRA champ who came within a round of the 2020 NHRA Pro Mod championship, just got his Funny Car license and had never driven one to the quarter-mile. “I’d already done the four-wide thing in Charlotte, so that was no big deal,” he said. “It’s everything else that’s completely different. A Funny Car is harder to drive than a Pro Mod, for one thing. It’s fast. Sitting behind the engine, having that body dropped down over you – it takes a little getting used to. In a Pro Mod, you make tiny little corrections going down the track. This thing, you really have to crank the wheel to get the car to go where you want it to go. To a door-car guy, everything about a Funny Car is just wrong.”

Despite that, Snider laid down one quick, consistent run after another at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, four in all, beginning with a 5.608 at 259.06 mph in the second session that qualified him firmly in the middle of the field. He followed with a 5.555/261.57 and a 5.583/260.11 for the No. 5 spot and appeared to enter eliminations with a clear advantage despite having less experience in a Funny Car than anyone in the lineup.

Snider was the only Top Alcohol Funny Car driver with any experience on a four-wide Tree, but when the Tree dropped, it was he who left too soon with a -.176 red-light, invalidating his quickest, fastest run of the weekend and low e.t. of the quad, 5.554/262.54. Nick Januik (5.555) and Aryan Rochon (5.623) advanced, and 2017 NHRA champion Shane Westerfield joined Snider on the sidelines with a third-best 5.66.

“Nobody wants to red-light, but we still learned a lot this weekend,” Snider said. “People think a converter just won’t work in a Funny Car, but how hard has anyone ever really tried? It’ll work. Clutches have been around forever. We’re just getting started with this thing, and I think we can be more consistent than the clutch cars when the weather gets hot. By the end of the year, we might just be running all the way to the quarter-mile like them.”

PSM – LAS VEGAS 2021

April 19, 2021 / Todd Veney

At the Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas, for the first time since his 2016 Rookie of the Year campaign, 28-year-old Cory Reed upset one name after another to reach an NHRA national event final. There, the former motocross star took out two of his three opponents – Scotty Pollacheck and Steve Johnson – but in a four-wide final, just as in any traditional one-on-one duel, only one driver ultimately emerges victorious.

In two preliminary rounds under this unique, divisive format, you don’t actually have to win – you can be second and still advance, which was perfect because in both the first and semifinals rounds, Reed finished second. He left a lofty list of accomplished riders in his wake: many-time national event winner Karen Stoffer in the first quad and former teammate Angelle Sampey and reigning national champion Matt Smith, who have seven championships between them, in the semi’s.

“I’m back,” Reed said after one of the finest outings of his still-young drag racing career. Powered by the vaunted Vance & Hines conglomerate, he muddled through three qualifying sessions with somewhat uneven results (7.07/191, 7.13/187, and a ninth-best 7.03/191) but came to life on race day. “I want to win. That’s the goal, that’s everything. And when I got to that final, I really felt like I was going to win.”

Smith had everybody covered in the first round with an outstanding 6.88 at 196.87 mph, but Reed left on him so badly he almost beat him to the stripe with a 6.98/192. (Stoffer’s strong 6.92/192 was voided by a foul start.) In the semi’s, Pollacheck got there first with a 6.93/193 but Reed was right on his wheelie bar with a 6.97/191, well ahead of highly favored Sampey’s 7.07/162 and Smith’s troubled 7.72/128.

More confident than ever, Reed let the clutch fly in the final round, but instead of a .017 light like he’d had in the opening round, his reaction time came up .049. “I didn’t cut as good of a light as I could have,” he said, “because the whole time I was thinking, ‘Don’t red-light, don’t red-light.’ “When I let go of the handle, the bike just didn’t get up and go. The clutch didn’t separate like it should – it didn’t flash. For whatever reason, it didn’t grab.”

Pollacheck red-lighted, Johnson broke, and suddenly there was just one rider between Reed and his first major NHRA title: his pal, Oehler, who outran him, 6.91/194 to by far Reed’s best run all weekend, a 6.94/193. Even with a perfect reaction time, there was nothing he could’ve done. “Losing sucks, but I can’t really complain,” Reed said. “This was a good weekend. “I totally thought I was going to win, 100 percent. I thought I had it.”

TAFC – FERRIS 2021

March 21, 2021 / Todd Veney

Annie Whiteley may have driven 270+ mph Funny Car for 10 years now, but with no clutch pedal to occupy her left foot and 12 things to do right before the Tree comes down, she’s starting all over. The YNot/J&A Racing team’s new torque-converter setup makes her feel, as the decal across her rear window attests, like a “STUDENT DRIVER” – at least on eighth-mile tracks like Xtreme Raceway Park.

“It’s bizarre,” Whiteley said of leaving off a trans-brake button. “With this converter, you realize right away that if you’re not staged first, you’re screwed. The whole time you’re up there, you know in the back of your mind how important it is to get in there first, and then after you roll in, there’s always three more things you have to do before you can leave: push the button, rev the motor, and let go on time. And it seems like right before you’re ready, the light’s coming on.”

Despite her unfamiliarity with the awkward new driving technique, Whiteley had what can only be termed a successful debut at the Xtreme Texas Nationals, the first race of the 2021 Mid-West Drag Racing Series. After just a handful of test laps to master the procedure, Whiteley drove to the No. 2 position behind eventual winner Sean Bellemeur with a 3.62 at 213.78 mph and advanced to the semifinals.

The routine isn’t just something Whiteley has to get used to – every run is harder for her than for everybody else because she’s the only one using a hand brake. Her left foot, the single most important part of cutting a good light for any clutch-car driver, now hangs idle, never called upon to do anything at any point of a run. “I know everybody else does it the other way, but no way am I using a foot brake,” she insisted. “I’d just jam on the brakes at the end of a run because when I get down there I’m so used to shoving in the clutch.”

Back at the line, instead of simply mashing a brake pedal with her left foot like everybody has to to stage, Whiteley’s right hand has to feel for the trans-brake button after she lets go of the brake handle – right when the Tree’s about to come on. Everything worked fine in qualifying and in the first round, where she cut a fine .047 reaction time in her first official race driving a converter car. Opponent Bryan Brown narrowly red-lighted, but she was long gone anyway with a consistent 3.64/212 that to back up her qualifying performance.

In the semi’s, Whiteley raced nemesis Chris Marshall, who, blinded by smoke when a driveline explosion filled the cockpit with smoke, banged Bob Miner’s car off both walls in qualifying. Nothing went right for Whiteley, starting when her visor fogging up before the race even started. “It wasn’t some little haze,” she said. “My mask was totally fogged up. At the last second, I flipped it up so I could see.”

Marshall got the jump, and Whiteley never did run him down. “The car was so hopped up, I had to pedal it,” she said. “Everything’s still new and I kind of got behind on my shifts. I hit the [shift] button, waited, and shifted again because the shift light wasn’t going out. It never did go out and I rolled out of the throttle a little before the finish line and still went faster than him. With this converter, you almost don’t even feel it shift. This converter is going to take some getting used to – I still don’t know if I like it or not.”

PRO MOD – FERRIS 2021

March 21, 2021 / Todd Veney

By just six-thousandths of a second, Jim Whiteley was denied his third major Pro Mod victory and first in Mid-West Drag Racing Series competition. The long-established leaver was a little too quick for his own good in the final round of the Xtreme Texas Nationals, barely red-lighting and handing the title to young Tommy Cunningham, who scored with a career-best 3.66/200.

Fully aware of just how easy it would be to red-light in the upcoming after-dark final, Whiteley still did just that, bringing an abrupt, unceremonious end to what had been his best weekend since his last Houston win. With a slight adjustment to the trans-brake throw, instead of being six-thousandths of a second too quick, his -.006 red-light would’ve been a heroic .006 or a .016 holeshot leave and a 3.67/205 win – not a runner-up, an indignity he’s suffered in comparatively few of his career finals.

Back in the familiar confines of his ’63 Corvette (the ’69 Camaro he ran at Gainesville will sit idle until the next quarter-mile NHRA event), Whiteley qualified No. 2, ahead of 19 other Pro Mod entrants and behind only Todd Martin. He then plowed through one formidable foe after another on race day, staring with former Pro Stock and Pro Stuck star Taylor Lastor, whom he dispatched with a better leave and a better run in a one-sided 3.67/204 to 3.74/202 decision.

Past MWDRS series champion Aaron Wells was the next to go, carrying the front end, drifting right, and sliding across the center line on what could have been a competitive run had he kept it on his own side. Oblivious to Wells’ difficulties in the left lane, Whiteley sped down the right with metronomic consistency, recording another 3.67 at 204 mph. Semifinal opponent Mike Labbate, who probably had the best shot at taking him out, red-lighted, advancing Whiteley, who got loose well downtrack and had to lift beyond the 330-foot mark, coasting to a winning 3.91 at just 148 mph – his only non-3.67 of eliminations.

Next up for Whiteley’s vaunted ‘Vette is the rescheduled MWDRS event at newly refurbished I-30 Dragway in Caddo Mills, Texas, and the Camaro’s next outing should be Apr. 30-May 2 at the final NHRA Southern Nationals in Atlanta.